Page 167 - RAPTC Mind, Body & Spirit

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APTC Convention 1947
commented that it was the finest team of clowns the Army had ever produced!
By this time my demob number had come up, and so to Civvy Street. I first worked for the Birmingham Education Authority before being invited from the Corps to do my remedial gymnastics and then my physiotherapy training. During this time I was still very much involved with my gymnastics, and went to Sweden in 1949 with the British team. I was then invited to assist in the redevelopment of the BAI (Birmingham Athletic Institute), which had been partly destroyed during the Blitz. I was able to set up a gymnastic club with a full range of Olympic gymnastic equipment.
I was elected a member of the Board of the AGA (now the BAGA) and accepted many areas of responsibility. Our first and major task was to create a steering committee to look into a new constitution for the national organisation. Amongst my other duties I chaired the Mens’ Technical Committee, took part in a display team for the opening of Lilleshall Hall by the then Princess Elizabeth, and established a mens’ coaching award scheme with all the associated courses and examinations.
I remained very involved in coaching and lecturing, and most of my weekends were taken up with this. I came to the APTC regularly to help Nik Stuart with his teams. In my position as chairman of the Mens’ Technical Committee I went to Zurich with Bill Williams (also an ex-member of the Corps), where we became the first two Englishmen to have our names registered as Brevitt judges. I also had the honor of being the first Western European judge to be invited behind the Iron Curtain for a match between the DDR and the CCCP.
This led to the development of a judge’s selection process to grade judges at club, area, and national levels, and to implement this I ran the majority of the initial courses. Again, thanks to the Corps, courses were attended by Bert Dooley, Jack Scrivener, Jack Pancott and others, all of whom became Brevitt judges. I have tried in this article to emphasize the important part played by the APTC in the development of gymnastics around the country.
SMI ‘Ginger’ Fountain, whom I mentioned earlier, went on to teach at Oundle following his demob. One of his pupils was George Kunzle, of the Kunzle cake family, who lived in Birmingham and as a result was sent to me by Ginger for coaching. George went on to become an international performer and a Brevitt judge, and also made the first gymnastics films and loops, featuring Sepp Stalder, the Swiss World and Olympic champion as his demonstrator. I joined forces with George to produce a number of books on the coaching of gymnastics.
My coaching and lecturing commitments continued to increase, and I was by this time running regular prison officer courses at Lilleshall, and courses at Birmingham University, Worcester, Cheltenham and Loughborough. I was also committed to judging
Bernard Thomas Middle row far right
both national and international competitions at almost every major event for 10 or 11 years.
As I needed to earn a living, and indeed had already left the NHS to set up the Edgbaston Health Clinic, it became obvious that gymnastics must follow the other national sporting bodies in appointing a national coach – weightlifting already had Al Murray, Bob Anderson was the national coach for fencing, and Geoff Dyson for athletics. I was pleased to be on the panel that ultimately appointed Nik Stuart as our first national coach for gymnastics, and in the first two years of his appointment saw him on a regular basis to receive his reports and work on his schedules (this I did in my capacity as Chairman of the Men’s’ Technical Committee).
In the meantime, my career in physiotherapy was developing apace, with involvement in other sports – hockey and athletics at international level, and professional football. Having handed these over to my expert colleagues, my next major endeavor was with cricket, first with Warwickshire and then with the MCC and England. My swansong with national gymnastics was in December 1969, when I went to Annonay in France as a neutral judge for the international competition between France and Switzerland.
It was with sadness that I then had to bow out of my involvement in gymnastics, when I was invited to tour with the MCC and England cricket team, which I did from 1969 to 1985. This meant my being out of the country for four or five months every year.
However, even during my time with cricket I could not quite give up my lifelong involvement with gymnastics, and whilst touring with the cricketers in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, Australia and New Zealand I often found myself attending local clubs and helping them with their coaching. As Australia and New Zealand were then so far from the hub of gymnastics I took great pleasure in talking to them about the latest judging requirements and in doing so fulfilled my own need to maintain a link with my first sport.
This even extended to my other hobby of ski-ing – whilst in Rome in 1954 for the World Gymnastic Championships, George Kunzle and I developed a strong liaison with the Swiss Gymnastic Federation, which ultimately led to an exchange scheme between the Swiss and ourselves. Someone at the gymnastic club in my favourite resort of St Moritz discovered that I holidayed there regularly and I ended up coaching the local team – a somewhat unusual type of après-ski!
I have never lost my enthusiasm for gymnastics, and I am delighted to say that since my retirement in 1998 I have again been able to take a slightly more active part in my beloved sport. My thanks will always go the APTC for playing such a major role, not only in my gymnastics career, but also in my life.